Springdale's Community Day on a 'Second Saturday' brings fun in the sun

Springdale Council member Brittni Bair couldn’t hide her delight as she watched people make their way down Lincoln Avenue between Center Street and Walters Lane 10 minutes before 11 a.m. on Saturday.

“It’s filling up quick. We don’t start until 11,” said Bair, pleased to see that the second edition of Second Saturdays, a community celebration held the second Saturday of the months of July, August and September in Springdale was catching on. Certainly the near perfect, sunny and warm — but not too hot — weather was doing its part to help.

Food, beverage (including beer and wine) and craft vendors lined the whole block. After starting with nine vendors in July there were 30 vendors at Saturday’s gathering. The event is the brainchild of Bair, who organized it.

“We needed to have more community centered events in town,” she said. “My goal initially was to have an event with more local produce, locally made goods, and local farms involved.”

One local farm that is participating is Kasanicky Farms Meats, a cattle and hog farm near Leechburg that turns out mouth watering sausage and beef jerky and had plenty of free samples on hand. Employee Stephanie Schrecengost, a Leechburg resident, said taking part in Second Saturdays is a way to get the word out about Kasanicky Farms’ products.

“Its definitely helped us branch out with our clientele,” Schrecengost said. “A lot of people in Springdale didn’t know who we were. Brittni said ‘I really want the community to have fresh meats available to them because there isn’t much nearby.’ It’s a compliment to us, and we bring samples because the product speaks for itself.”

Helping themselves to samples of the meats were Ken and Dolly Hoffman of Cheswick.

“We’ve lived around this area for 50 years and we like to support everything,” said Ken, 77.

“It’s a real nice community affair,” said Dolly. “It brings you out. You see people you know. I really like it. When it comes to the foods, the pizza, the kielbasa, you can’t miss when you come here.”

There were also free snow cones courtesy of Ray and Stephanie Police who were promoting Redemption Church in Lower Burrell.

“Everything is free at Redemption,” said Ray, after handing a lemon-lime cone to a parched reporter. “This is just an act of kindness, a public service. And hopefully people come to the church. This is fun just meeting people. Businesses are supporting each other. That makes it fun. It’s a community coming together.”

Bair said Springdale wants to make sure its residents can have a place to go to enjoy themselves.

“We have a lot of people who are renters here and people who use the bus system,” she said. “So we want to be able to ensure that people can walk down and have a fun-filled day.”

And it certainly appeared that people were having just that. Bair said she was hoping to attract at least a couple of hundred people.

A group of volunteers called the Springdale Team of Active Residents (STAR) was going to have vintage cars on display and a disc jockey in the evening.